The risky business of not facing up to climate change: Editorial

This combo made from file photos shows former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, left, and former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. Climate change will exact enormous costs on U.S. regional economies in the form of lost property, reduced industrial output and higher health expenses, according to a report backed by Bloomberg, Paulson and Thomas F. Steyer, a former hedge fund manager. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews, Pablo Martinez Monsivais, File)

Unafraid to make use of the commonest economic-political cliche of our time, a new group announced itself last fall thusly: “If the United States were run like a business, its board of directors would fire its financial advisers for failing to disclose the significant and material risks associated with unmitigated climate change.”

Nothing wrong with a cliche in the service of the greater good. And that’s precisely what the Risky Business Project is: Some of our nation’s most formidable business and business-associated leaders, many of them of the Republican persuasion, gathered together to face up to the most pressing issue of our time.

People who run businesses must live in the real world, not in one made up of what-ifs or we-wishes. They know that one’s personal politics have nothing to do with those external factors. When the sea level is rising and the micro-climates in which crops are grown are heating up and the deserts are on the move, the Earth doesn’t care if you’re an American tea party adherent or a European socialist. It is what it is. If the climate changes then you’d better believe the business climate does as well. And if too much climate change is bad for business, isn’t it a lot better to try to do something about it than sticking your head in the sand on that beach where that ocean water is moving up to drown you?

The Risky Business Project’s co-chairs are Michael Bloomberg, the former Republican turned independent who was a billionaire entrepreneur before and after he became mayor of New York City; Henry Paulson, who served President George W. Bush as Treasury secretary and was the chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs; and Tom Steyer, a self-described “avid Californian” who made his billions at Farallon Capital Management in the Bay Area and is a Democrat.

Like any good business endeavor, the trio and the group’s star-studded board didn’t want to deal with just the extant facts presented by others. They hired the Rhodium Group, an economic research firm that analyzes disruptive global trends for “an independent assessment of the economic risks posed by a changing climate in the U.S.” Then they brought in Risk Management Solutions, the world’s largest “catastrophe-modeling company,” and partnered them with an economist and a climate scientist to look at the problem in the way that a big business would: Essentially, as a matter of insurance.

In the voluminous report, there is no screaming bloody murder: “Weather is inherently variable, and no single hot day, drought, winter storm or hurricane can be exclusively attributed to climate change,” the authors soberly and correctly note. But that doesn’t mean we can relax and play the cards we’re dealt: “A warmer climate, however, increases the frequency and/or severity of many extreme weather events.”

Earth’s climate is incredibly complex. No one knows exactly what the future holds, given our civilization’s greenhouse-gas impact on it. But one unfortunate trend among some of the original activists who decades ago began to hand-wring about the problem is that too many have in the past year or two decided that we’ve gone too far and it’s too late to make a difference. That’s not what Risky Business believes: “Our findings show that, if we continue on our current path, many regions of the U.S. face the prospect of serious economic effects from climate change. However, if we choose a different path — if we act aggressively to both adapt to the changing climate and to mitigate future impacts by reducing carbon emissions — we can significantly reduce our exposure to the worst economic risks from climate change and also demonstrate global leadership on climate.”

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Hey, many of these guys are politicians, right? And so they see that an interesting side effect of taking the lead on climate-change mitigation can put the United States in the global-leadership position it held in the past century after helping to win the two world wars. As business leaders, they see nothing wrong with doing well by doing good.

Neither do we.

It’s heartening to see this all-American approach to fighting climate change. The recognition that solutions lie in taking an economic viewpoint is practical news the whole world can use.